Idaho's gems: western lakes are no small potatoes

Each is architecturally different, from a Cape Cod cottage, to an A-frame chateau, to a lighthouse look-alike. Some are topped by widows' walks and the back sections of many float houses are actually boat garages.

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Walt and Jeanne Nicholson live in a two-story duplex float house at Scenic Bay Marina and Motel directly across the bay from MacDonald's. The marina has 200 open and covered slips, plus about 60 float houses. Like many of them, the back half of the Nicholson's house belongs to their 23-foot Bayliner Cierra plus a paddleboat, some water toys and Jeanne's kayak.

From their floating front patio or the top deck of their home, the view across five miles of open water is to the mountains that share the name of that "more fashionable" lake to the south, Coeur d'Alene.

"That lake is all about entertainment and style, and that's what draws most people to Coeur d'Alene," Walt Nicholson says. "But our lake has a reputation as a big, cold body of water that can get nasty at times and that tends to keep people away. We kinda like that, actually," he adds.

Run Silent, Run Deep

For all the comments and stories about the lake's weather, the Navy calls Pend Oreille "the quietest body of water in the world." And that's the reason the Naval Surface Warfare Center maintains its Acoustic Research Detachment at Bayview, home to the Navy's second largest recruit training facility during World War II.

The Navy deeded the 4,000-acre camp to Idaho in 1965 (it's now Farragut State Park) but kept a waterfront parcel in the middle of Bayview and in the 1980s developed a submarine research facility there.

"What we do here is all about quiet submarines," says CMDR Kevin Grundy, the officer in charge. "This is the premier research facility in the world used to determine the ways sound affects our ability to operate submarines.

"Submarine warfare has changed since the Cold War when the focus was on open ocean, deep water operations (remember The Hunt for Red October?). The quest then was for quiet propulsion systems," Grundy says. "Today we focus on inshore operations that rely on submarines like the smaller Virginia class. But these vessels need the stealth advantage of quiet operation just as much as the big boats," he notes.

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"Why are we still at it today? Well, you have to remember, there are still bad guys out there and they have submarines, too," he says.

To do that kind of work, the Navy has erected what Grundy calls the "largest underwater structure in the world" in the depths of Lake Pend Oreille. This is an assemblage of hydrophones and other test equipment designed to listen to and measure sound waves underwater as well as to generate noise pulses against one-quarter or one third scale models of submarine hulls. The whole grid is anchored to the bottom in a thousand feet of water and suspended by cables; it covers an area the size of a football stadium.